James Williamson of Iggy and the Stooges has said, “I was over at Capitol Records and as I was going out I was watching this guy recording and it was Scott Thurston with this other band. He was cool, I could hear that he was a great piano player, so I got his contact info and I said, 'You wanna play with us?' When we put the band Iggy and the Stooges back together, I asked him if he wanted to play with us, and he said, 'Sure,' and the rest is history."

Williamson went on to say that he did not play much on Iggy Pop’s New Values album: "Actually, I only played guitar on a couple of things. Scott played almost all the guitar. He’s a very talented guy. He’s a very good guitar player and a very good keyboard guy. He’s just a very good musician."[citation needed]

In 1982 Thurston joined The Motels and played on their 1983 album Little Robbers. Prior to that he was also a member of the Chas Sandford Group.

Tom Petty said, "I was trying to get him out of the corner over there, because he always saw himself as a sideman—'I’m a Sidebreaker'—and he tried to stay over to the side. But we love him, he sings great with me, and we want him out there with us. He’s a good buffer between the rest of us. When we’re fighting or have some cliqueishness, he’s good at getting in there and saying, 'Let’s look at it this way,' because Duckhead, as we call him, is neutral. He doesn’t come from Florida, wasn’t there when this or that happened.”[1]